President Barack Obama wasn’t shy about invoking Osama bin Laden’s killing during the 2012 campaign — but when it comes to his larger approach to terrorism he’s pursued a policy of speaking softly and ordering lots of drone strikes.

That delicate balance was shattered by the Boston Marathon attack, thrusting a downplayed anti-terror campaign into the spotlight and the issue of terrorism to the top of Obama’s second-term priorities, at least in the short term.

Obama, whose 2008 election was propelled by opposition to the Iraq War, has jettisoned the clash-of-civilizations rhetoric favored by George W. Bush — even as he’s embraced or ramped up many of the same anti-terror methods — the deployment of unmanned drones, warrant-less wiretapping, the open-ended use of Guantanamo Bay to warehouse potential terrorists.

Those two seemingly contradictory strategies are bound by a single motive: Obama wanted to go after terrorists without allowing the War on Terror to devour a second presidency, hoping to put it on the back burner behind domestic issues, the economy and his top foreign policy priority of rebuilding America’s image around the world.

“He’s got this disconnect between his body language, his emotions and his actions,” says former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, who thinks Obama has charted the right course in the wake of the Boston attacks so far. “It’s a reflection of how he wants to prioritize the public discussion… He’s been pretty tough and good on anti-terror policy but he doesn’t want to talk about it that much… He doesn’t want this to be the conversation, he doesn’t want to lean in to it emotionally like [we] did.

“That will have to change now, obviously,” he added.

Obama and his advisers have counseled moderation and engagement to deal with the challenge of radicalization over the years, but the marathon attacks are already spurring demands for a tougher response. The standard Obama approach doesn’t seem like it’s going to work — there’s deep concern about the independent, homegrown nature of the attackers and key Congressional Republicans immediately criticized the administration for its decision not to classify the captured bomber as an enemy combatant.

“Even if it turns out that these guys aren’t foreign-directed, that you had at least one American citizen launching a homegrown terrorist attack on American soil, that changes the game,” says Matt Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman under Attorney General Eric Holder.

“For years, the president and experts have warned about this kind of homegrown terrorism, coming from communities in our midst, but it hasn’t happened and the public didn’t really pay that much attention to the threat… The issue of radicalization of our own people is now a reality, and that’s something this administration has feared for a long time,” he added.

In statements to the press, and in his speech at the memorial service for the three people killed at the marathon last week, Obama has taken pains to avoid casting the attack as part of a larger conflict, warning people not to draw “premature” conclusions from the reports surfacing about the Chechen brothers accused of detonating a pair or crude but murderous homemade pressure-cooker bombs.

But, as commander-in-chief, he’s also been careful to strike a defiant tone, keeping the door open to a broader response if the attack is found to be part of a larger plot.

“[W]e will find out who did this; we’ll find out why they did this,” Obama said hours after the bombs went off. “Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice.”

Some Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), are calling for the administration to consider treating the surviving suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokar Tsarnaev, as an enemy combatant, which would deny him some rights according to citizens.

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney flatly rejected that approach, telling reporters that Tsarnaev “will not be treated as an enemy combatant.”

“We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice,” Carney added just as the Justice Department announced it had charged Tsarnaev with using a weapon of mass destruction. “Under U.S. law, United States citizens cannot be tried in military commissions. It is important to remember since 9/11, we have used the federal court system to convict and incarcerate hundreds of terrorists.”

So far, Obama and Holder are seeking a middle course on the handling of Tsarnaev, who was gravely wounded while attempting to elude capture on Friday. Federal prosecutors have arraigned him on terror charges that carry a possible death penalty and initially delayed reading him his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, citing a provision that allowed them to take special measures even against U.S. citizens in the face of imminent threats.

That enemy-combatant decision could end up a footnote if the brothers are found to have acted alone.

But Obama will face a backlash if the Tsarnaevs are linked to Islamic militant groups overseas, Graham warned.

“I believe such a decision [to try Tsarnaev as a citizen] is premature, it is impossible for us to gather the evidence in just a few days to determine whether or not this individual should be held for questioning under the law of war,” Graham said after Carney spoke.

“We have the right to gather intelligence,” Graham said. “Under the criminal system, [you] should not question someone without their lawyer present.” But, “under the law of armed conflict, when you’re trying to gather intelligence about future attacks against your nation, there is no requirement for a lawyer,” he said, referring to the treatment afforded “enemy combatants.”

Anthony Cordesman, former aide in the Nixon Defense Department and to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), says it will be harder for Obama to downplay the issue of terrorism, post-Boston, because “we’re not talking a narrow group of terrorists anymore, we’re talking a range of insurgents that may or may not meet the classic profile of terrorists.”

The president, Cordesman says, now faces a dilemma similar in nature, if not magnitude, to what Bush faced in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, the challenge of “crying wolf in proportion to the number of wolves that are out there.”

The first four-plus years of Obama’s presidency were filled with near-misses, like the failed Christmas Day underwear bombing plot in 2009 and the foiled Times Square attack six months later, along with more ambiguous events like the Ft. Hood massacre in 20o9 and the deadly Benghazi assault in 2012, which failed to conform to black-and-white definitions of terrorism established by the Sept. 11 attacks.

The highest-profile terrorism headline of Obama’s presidency was also its emotional high point: the May 2011 killing of bin Laden.

Even if Boston turns out to have been an entirely home-grown plot, more DC sniper than 9/11, the attack was clearly timed to garner maximum media coverage — and its planners, for all their wildness, executed a successful attack under the noses of law enforcement with a degree of technical competence not seen in recent attempts.

But what really sets it apart — and poses the greatest challenge to this president and his successors — is its origins in a mundane working-class New England neighborhood. The 2001 terrorists were transients with no enduring ties to the United States; the Tsarnaev brothers are, essentially, radicalized Americans — survivor Dzhokar Tsarnaev was a naturalized citizen and University of Massachusetts marine biology student and his brother was a Golden Gloves boxer — blurring the lines between terrorist and boy-next-door.

Similar homegrown attacks have torn at the cultural and political fabric of other countries. As horrible as it was, the Boston attack was small in comparison to the July 7, 2005 subway attack pulled off by radicalized Britons — the ringleader worked as a mentor in an elementary school — who killed more than 50 people and wounded hundreds more.

The 7/7 attacks prompted national soul-searching and an overhaul of the U.K’s anti-terror and surveillance strategies, sparking a wave of attacks on mosques and finger-pointing among officials who missed signs of the plot.

Nothing like that has happened here so far, in part, because the attacks weren’t as deadly.

But that dynamic could change fast if the Boston bombings are found to be part of a larger plot or if terrorists attempt new attacks.

“We still don’t really know whether this should be defined as a domestic attack of terrorism, an international act of terrorism or some sort of a hybrid,” said P.J. Crowley, a veteran State Department official who served as former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s spokesman.

“The reaction to Boston has been proportional to the magnitude of the bombing — pausing to mourn losses and to figure out what went wrong, but then moving on.”